An
adviser to the Ukraine Interior Minister said pro-Russia
separatists shot down the passenger plane with a
Russian-made BUK ground-to-air
missile system. And residents in the area — a
stronghold of pro-Russian rebels who are fighting the Ukrainian
army — said one of those systems was
nearby.

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Insider reached out to speak with a witness who gave an account
of how the situation was being perceived by Donetsk residents.
The man identified himself as a Donetsk-born
40-year-old working in the coal industry. He wished to remain
anonymous because, as he put it, speaking in Russian, "the town
is run by the terrorists, and I do not want to
suffer."

The people he
referred to as "terrorists" are the pro-Russian rebels.
Officially, the group is referred to as the Donetsk People's
Republic.

Although he did not see the plane crash, he said he ran to his
window after hearing the sound of an explosion after the plane
fell to the ground. He could not see the situation from his
balcony, so he climbed to the roof of his house and "saw the
smoke on the horizon."

Twitter

And later, he "learned that the terrorists shot down a civilian
plane," he said.

The man added:
"I'm in shock! The terrorists must answer for their
actions!"

Regarding the
passengers on the plane, he said (again, translated from
Russian): "According to the
information of the local residents, all the passengers on the
plane died. And X [amounts] of bodies are thrown over the field
next to the poultry farm settlement Grabovo."

He said, "I
anxiously await the arrival of Ukrainian legal power!"

He added that
earlier on Thursday his colleagues saw a Buk-missile system pass
by their office. His windows at work face the opposite direction,
so he did not see it himself.

But he connected us to a second anonymous source who saw the
Buk-missile system.

According to
the second witness, the Buk missile system spotted in Torez,
Ukraine, "was being towed and it was transported to the
Snezhnoye." Snezhnoye is a rural locality
in the Donest'ka Oblast'. Torez and Snezhnoye are 11.8
km apart.

The second
witness also heard the plane crash and saw the subsequent smoke.
He said that there were three explosions: the first when the
plane was actually hit, the second when the tail of the plane
fell off, and the third when the plane fell.

Radio 24
(Pадио 24), a Ukrainian radio
station, posted this tweet which shows a Buk-missile system in
Snezhnoye, Ukraine: